Final Stand-Alone Issue of Battlegames On the Presses

The final stand-alone issue of Battlegames, issue 34, is on the presses and will be published next Monday, 11th March.

Packed with content as usual, the final farewell issue will give you plenty to think about as I plunge into creating my first ever issue of Miniature Wargames!

• See you on the other side: I explain what is happening to Battlegames and its merger with Miniature Wargames with a simple FAQ so you know exactly what to expect.

• Back to the grindstone: Diane Sutherland continues her ‘Tales of a wargames widow’ series with a spot of construction for fans of polyunsaturated fats – that’s olive oil to you and me. Her wonderful olive press will no doubt be seen gracing many an ancient battlefield.

• Forward observer: Neil Shuck has a bumper outing, extolling the virtues of digital tablets in the age of e-rules, commenting on the shock failure of Gates of Antares to reach its Kickstarter goals, celebrating the emergence of a certain king from a car park, getting excited about steampunk and finally raising his fist in the air to proudly proclaim “I am a space marine!”

• Command challenge: the last issue of Battlegames is graced by the pen that gave us that famous scenario in the first – Brigadier Charles Grant returns with a terrific teaser called “An attack from two sides or ‘caught napping’. Can you extricate your force from the trap?

• 25 years of BattleTech: sci-fi specialist Ashley Pollard reports on the success of this deceptively simple game featuring battling ‘mechas’, giant manned robots tramping across the post-apocalyptic landscape. With some nice sci-fi eye candy, Ashley gives us a thorough appraisal of this popular game.

• Send three and fourpence: our Conrad is exercised about wargaming etiquette and asks whether it’s better to be right, or to have friends who will play with you.

• An ever-evolving army:Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers Journal editor Richard Baber confesses to having an army that may never be finished – on purpose! Behold the joy of one wargamer’s Gallic obsession.

• Win more wargames: in the concluding part of the series, I turn the cannon on you, the reader – after giving you all those strategic tips, you hardly imagined that you’d get away without a final examination, did you? So, now’s your chance to recreate part of the Wars of the Faltenian Succession yourself, the invasion of neutral Martinstaad, with both sides aiming to grab the capital city. You can use the campaign rules I provided way back in issues 1-12, or use your own. Have fun with this strategic teaser! (Approximately corps level.)

• Whose history? Canadian gamer Ross Macfarlane asks whether your games are intended to be re-creational or rec-reational, exploring the common question of what we mean by ‘accuracy’. A beautifully composed and considered piece, fitting for the final issue of what many have seen as the most thought-provoking magazine in the hobby.

• Painting the Great War: puzzlingly, some people don’t like articles on painting. Well, apologies to them, because I and many other readers love them, and this one’s a corker from Mark Hargreaves, detailing how he paints 28mm figures for the Western Front of 1917-18. As usual, there’s something here for everyone to think about how they approach their own painting, with superb photos by Mark himself.

• A throw of the dice: we round off the main articles with a lovely piece of whimsy by one of those who appeared in issue 1. Well-known US gamer and blogger Bill Protz has provided a delightful report from the Academy of Dice Mechanics, and you are likely to recognise your own dicey habits here.

• Recce: a final round-up of the latest products and services before it girds its loins for a new home over in MW.

• Thoughts from the armchair: a last musing from Mr Siggins, who as always shares his thoughts as one of the ‘everymen’ of the hobby, plagued by highs and lows and the flapping of butterfly wings, and even the dreaded threat of modelrailwayitis… Fear not, you’ll be seeing Mr Siggins again!

• The Battlegames Combat Stress Appeal: let me assure you that the Appeal will be transposed lock, stock and two smoking barrels across to Miniature Wargames, especially since momentum seems to be gathering again. News is included of the next Combat Stress Commemorative Miniature auction that will begin in just a couple of weeks time.

And so, that really is all, folks!

A huge thank you to all of you for your support over seven rather exciting and, err, ‘interesting’ years. New challenges await – including a new Miniature Wargames FaceBook page which I am about to start building: https://www.facebook.com/MiniatureWargames
I’m also opening a new Twitter account @MiniatureWG but of course I shall also keep the Battlegames accounts alive – there will be more to come under this name, as promised.

Ah well. Despite my hobbies and my teenage son, I have never quite made that final break from the 1970s and actually gone and purchased a smart phone. No i-anything, I’m afraid – and the only android here is to be found in my son’s room, on his cell phone. Heck, I even purchased a used AT&T 500-series phone for my landline a few months back. Nice ring to it, but I don’t think I am going to be using it to access the itunes store any time soon.

How DOES one go about ordering a PDF version of your final ‘zine? I want to expose myself once more to Ms. Pollard’s… deathless prose. Seriously, I want to see what she has to say, and since it’s plain I won’t be seeing it on HER blog, I will cheerfully pay for a copy of Issue 34.

Hi Steven, nice to have you visit. Since the magazine is in flux at the moment, and I won’t be able to release individual PDFs for a couple of months yet whilst the dust settles, please contact me direct via email henry at henryhyde dot co dot uk

I, too, will be sorry to see the Battlegames name disappear, but I know its spirit will survive in the new MW under your editorship, Henry. The last issue looks a fitting finale – as Dan Duryea’s character says in ‘Six Black Horses’, “When I go, I want to slam the door behind me!”